how to identify?

[Dabby[GER]]

What is the trick to successfully identifying friend or foe and, better yet, the exact vehicle type? without using visual?
Sometimes it works pretty quick, but sometimes in the same map it dont seems to work at all. What do i need? Radar? ESM? does it help multiple Radars are on?
Thanks

[BobTank63]

Radar will almost never give you an ID. ESM will, but that depends on the enemy turning on their own radars. You always try asking them over the radar (with you unit selected, right click on enemy and select "Request ID"), but this won't always work due to a number of reasons.

In these cases, you will probably have to resort to closing to the contact and ID'ing it visually. This is where your fighters/search helicopters come in.

You can also tentatively ID a contact yourself based off it's behavior. If it's traveling in a group and/or going at high speed (over 15 knots for a ship and 500 knots for a plane), it probbly isn't civilian.

[Ian]

You as the player have to make educated guesses based on the contact behavior when not relying on purely sensor-based ID. VID is fine but dangerous...

Methodology around this is explained in the 5th tutorial mission which should be coming in the next few weeks